The Broken Land (17 page)

“Valor.” Mother’s voice cuts to the bone. “He distinguished himself in battle over and over. If you need proof, perhaps you should consult with your own war chief. Skenandoah gave Sky Messenger his name because of his ability to call sunlight from cloudy skies on the war trail. Skenandoah believed that Elder Brother Sun spoke directly to Sky Messenger.”

There is silence for a long time. Kittle, of course, knows this.

Twenty heartbeats later, Taya pulls the door curtain aside and steps out carrying a steaming bowl of cornmeal mush with a wooden spoon stuck in it. She is a newly made woman with large brown eyes, and waist-length black hair that sways across the front of her cape as she walks. Her expression is stony.

She lifts the bowl to me. “It’s cold today. Grandmother says you should eat.”

For many summers, whenever I returned from a war walk and came to report to Matron Kittle, I brought Taya and her four sisters presents. Every warrior in the nation brought them gifts. It is part of our tradition, a way of honoring the high matron’s lineage. Taya’s needs have always been met. Slaves cook her meals, wash her clothing, run her errands. She has never known pain or real hunger. Because her lineage is so precious, she’s rarely allowed to travel. She’s never been more than a few days’ walk from Bur Oak Village. Even if I tried to explain to her what I see coming, she has no framework for understanding such horror and loneliness.

I take the bowl. “Thank you for your kindness.”

She tucks her hands beneath her cape and nervously wets her lips. She seems to be mustering her courage to speak to me.

“It’s all right, Taya. You can ask me anything.”

After swallowing hard, she says, “I’ve been thinking about this. I’m worried about our children. What your dishonor will do to them.” She cautiously looks up at me from beneath long eyelashes. “It may stain them forever.”

“In a few summers, our people will realize that what I did was for the good of all.”

She tilts her head, not certain she believes this. Then she says, “I don’t wish to marry you, do you know that? Did your clan tell you that I objected?”

I stop eating. “Yes. This is just a political alliance, Taya. Nothing more.”

She flaps her arms at her sides, very much like a frustrated child. “I can see how being married to me will strengthen your clan, but how does such an arrangement benefit mine? You may or may not be a Dreamer. What if it turns out your Dream is all fantasy? Where will that leave me and our children?”

I take another bite and chew. Finally, I answer, “If it turns out that my Dream is false, and I disgrace you, then you may set my belongings outside the Deer Clan longhouse, and I will return to my own clan. Divorce is a simple matter.”

“Yes, divorce may be, but the shame I will bear from your grandiose lies—”

“They are
not
lies,” I reply sternly.

As though to cast the final insult, she tosses her head and adds, “Well, I don’t love you.”

I don’t know what to make of this. Of course she doesn’t. Why does she think she must tell me this? I try to think back to what I felt when I’d seen fourteen summers, but the analogy doesn’t work. My childhood was rudely stripped from me when I’d seen eleven summers. I never had the chance to go through this awkward half-child and half-adult stage.

I force my thoughts back. “Taya, this has nothing to do with love. It’s a political arrangement. That’s all.”

She wets her lips again. “Grandmother says you are a coward. A traitor. Are you?”

“If I were a coward, I would not be here. I would have lived out my life as an Outcast in the forest.”

“Some people—mostly ignorant outsiders—are saying that you are the prophesied human False Face.”

It isn’t a question. She cocks her head, waiting for me to comment, probably to deny it. Claiming to be the prophesied human False Face is like saying you are Elder Brother Sun, or the good hero twin, Sapling.

I answer, “I don’t know what I am. But I know what I must do, and it will take every ounce of strength I have to accomplish it. If you become my wife, your clan will expect you to help me stop the coming darkness. Can you do that?”

Taya lifts her chin in a superior manner. “Probably not. No. What you do about your
Dreams
is no affair of mine.”

My heart suddenly tastes like dust, dry as a bone, struggling to beat in the shadows of a circling flock of vultures.

“Well,” I say through a long exhalation, “at least we know where we stand.”

Taya draws herself up. “You were an excellent deputy war chief. I’ve heard War Chief Deru tell stories about you …” She says all this while her gaze bores holes into me. “Even yesterday he told Grandmother that if he had just two dozen men like you he could conquer the world. If you really wanted to be useful, you would return to the war trail.”

“Deru … defended me?” The warm bowl in my hands lowers, and the rain on the roof sounds suddenly loud.

“Yes. He said he didn’t blame you for following your Spirit Helper. He told Grandmother he would have done the same if he’d been called into the forest by his Helper.”

My heart transforms into a tight fist that makes it difficult to breathe. The night I vanished, he must have known in less than one hand of time that I’d betrayed him. How can he forgive me so easily?

I have been purposefully avoiding Deru, hiding from the accusations in his eyes. Now I know I must seek him out. “I am ashamed of myself,” I say. “I should have gone to him immediately.”

“Why?” She looks truly confused.

I stare at her. Her inability to grasp honor is especially disheartening. I eat more of the warm mush.

Taya watches me. Her eyes are deep dark pools. “If we marry, you will work very hard, won’t you, to make certain your disgrace does not taint our children?”

There’s so much more at stake than children. I hesitate.

The elders of the Bear Clan say marriage is the price I must pay for my actions on the war trail. I no longer have the luxury of being an “oddity.” I must be a productive member of the clan. As must Taya. Even if we are betrothed, we cannot actually marry until she is carrying my child. That’s how she proves her worth to my clan. Soon, perhaps before these negotiations are finished, I may be asked to begin sleeping in her bed, in her longhouse, and obeying the orders of her clan matron—as is the way of our people, where, after marriage, a man moves to his wife’s village. I will do my duty to my clan, but …
Baji’s smile appears just behind my eyes, filled with the candor of one who knows my darkest secrets and needs, and is unafraid … .

A stunning sense of loss paralyzes me for an instant. I can’t move or think. I stare unblinking at the far palisade. All I see is Baji.

“You haven’t answered me. Why not?” Taya says in an annoyed voice.

I force myself to eat the last bites of mush and hand the empty bowl and spoon to her. Rain pounds the plaza, creating a drumlike cadence. A lone puppy trots through the downpour with his tail between his legs.

My clan believes this alliance is crucial.

Bluntly, I say, “If either of us survives to have children, then we’ll talk about it. And, now, excuse me. I must see Old Bahna.”

I bow to her and stride across the plaza for the Turtle Clan longhouse.

“But I’m not finished speaking with you!” she calls after me. “Come back here this instant!”

I walk faster … .

Seventeen

K
oracoo ducked into the Turtle Clan longhouse in Yellowtail Village. While she let her eyes adjust to the darkness, she listened to the voices. She might not be able to see the people, but they saw her. Whispers ran the three-hundred-hand length of the house. Koracoo shivered in the warmth and began walking down the center aisle, past ten compartments and five fire hearths, before she reached Old Bahna’s compartment in the middle of the house.

Sky Messenger and Bahna looked up at her expectantly as she removed her wet cape and dropped it beside the hearth where they sat with tea cups in their hands. Clearly, they’d been having a serious discussion. Firelight shadowed the deep furrows in Bahna’s elderly face. He had seen fifty-three summers pass. Thin gray hair lay like spiderwebs across his leathery cheeks. He looked up at her with kind eyes. “What is the news, Speaker?”

Sky Messenger’s jaw clenched, preparing himself for the worst.

Koracoo knelt on the far side of the fire. “Matron Kittle accepts our offer and will prepare a chamber for her granddaughter and her betrothed. Sky Messenger will sleep in the Deer Clan longhouse tonight.”

Sky Messenger’s head dropped, and he closed his eyes. Koracoo couldn’t tell if it was in relief or dread. She extended her icy hands to the warmth of the flames.

“Marriage is a small price, my son.”

“Yes, I know.” He exhaled the words, and when Sky Messenger looked at her, pain shone in his dark eyes.

Koracoo knew about his relationship with Baji last summer when they’d briefly been allied with the Flint People, but she’d assumed their togetherness would be fleeting, a battle-walk romance over as soon as the alliance shifted … and alliances always shifted. Apparently, it had not ended, at least not to her son.

“Will you have a cup of tea, Speaker?” Bahna asked, and reached for one of the clay cups resting by the pot that nestled in the ashes at the edge of the fire.

“Yes, thank you. It’s a wintry day out there.”

Bahna dipped the cup into the pot, and the scent of raspberries wafted up with the steam. He extended it. Koracoo gratefully clutched the cup in her cold fingers. As she sipped the tea the delicious tartness of dried raspberries, lightly accented with mint leaves, coated her tongue. “This is good, Bahna.”

“On days like this, it helps to drink fruity teas. They cleanse the blood and open the heart.” Bahna leaned back on the woven floor mats and gave her a small troubled smile.

Koracoo frowned at the men. “What have you been discussing? Your expressions are dire.”

“Many things,” Bahna said with a deep sigh, “but mostly Sky Messenger’s Dream. One part is very troubling.”

Sky Messenger braced his elbows on his knees and gazed at her across the fire. The flame-light fluttered over his high cheekbones and blunt chin. It pleased her that he’d grown into a handsome man, though she feared for his future. If his Dream was true—and she believed it was—before next summer solstice he would be tested a thousand times. He might also be dead.

Sky Messenger said, “Bahna is concerned about the way my Dream ends.”

Bahna nodded and waved crooked fingers through the firelight. The joint-stiffening disease had turned them into claws. He hadn’t been able to fully open his fist for many summers. “Sky Messenger tells me there is a black hole in his afterlife soul, a place where he fears memories live, but he cannot find them. I believe that’s where the man’s voice comes from. The ghost is calling to him.”

“Why?”

“Because, Speaker, the dead always wish to be buried so that they may travel to the afterlife.”

As images from twelve summers ago appeared behind her eyes, rage filled Koracoo. She unconsciously gripped CorpseEye where he was slipped into her belt, and leaned forward. The gesture must have been threatening, for Bahna pulled away. “This man was evil, Bahna. He hurt many children. Believe me when I tell you that I
want
his soul to wander the earth alone for eternity. We deliberately mutilated his body and scattered the pieces so that no one would ever be able to recognize him and send his soul to the Land of the Dead. He is a condemned man, and that is what he deserves.” Her voice had gone low.

“Yes,” Bahna said with a tottering nod. “Sky Messenger told me. But you must understand, Speaker, that that is the problem.”

“You mean that’s why Sky Messenger hears his voice at the end of the Dream? The dead man wants someone to collect his bones and Sing his afterlife soul to the Land of the Dead?”

“Of course.”

“This is a soul sickness, then? How do we cure it?”

Bahna frowned at her, then placed another branch on the fire. As sparks crackled and spat, he continued, “The ghosts of those killed by our hands or in our names must be mourned and cared for. The beginning for Sky Messenger is to remember the event that caused his sickness.”

Sky Messenger did not look at Koracoo, but his jaw ground as though he’d rather die than do that. She did not know exactly what had happened to him that long-ago day. No one did. And if that little boy had felt it necessary to bury the memory deep down in the darkness between his souls, was it wise for anyone to dredge it up again?

As though reading the tracks of her souls, Bahna smiled faintly. The wrinkles around his mouth resembled sunlit rings on a dark pond. “Please try to understand, Speaker. Each of us can put ourselves in the place of another, but your son is called upon to do more. He must put himself in the place of many. In the next moons, the Spirits will demand much of him. He will not have the strength to endure unless he stares into the blackness inside him, and releases the man he has caged there.”

Koracoo swirled the tea in her cup, perhaps a little too violently. The purple liquid sloshed out onto her hand. She wiped it on her red leather legging. “I think the entire matter is best left alone.”